Protecting Montana through the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project.

The Nature Conservancy has acquired 117,152 acres from the Plum Creek timber company, securing another piece of private land that makes up the landscape known as the Crown of the Continent.

These acres were the last of the land once owned by Plum Creek within the Blackfoot River Valley. The project spans the Marshall Creek Wildlife Management Area, through the Placid Lake region, and into the Gold, Belmont, and Blanchard Creek valleys.

The Clearwater-Blackfoot Project is one of the largest and most significant unprotected private parcels surrounding the Crown of the Continent. These lands and waters provide critical habitat for threatened Canada lynx and grizzly bears and is regularly traversed by wolverines - one of the rarer mammals left in the continental U.S. It also provides wildlife with connections to other protected land vital to their health and resilience, including the Rattlesnake Wilderness and the South Fork Jocko Primitive Area. The streams provide habitat for Westslope cutthroat and bull trout while the forests, meadows and wetlands support a diversity of birds and other wildlife species.

These lands are enormously important to people who have hiked, hunted, worked and played there for generations, and the Nature Conservancy has been reaching out to local partners and communities to identify the best possible ways to protect this area for future generations.